14 Caird, p. 61.

Cf. A. M. Hunter, ‘Revelation, beyond all other books, has made people feel that heaven is real; and in the strength of that blessed conviction go forth anew to do battle with the world and all its evils’ (Introducing the New Testament, SCM, 1945, p. 113).

J. B. Phillips, The Book of Revelation (Collins, 1960), p. 9.

‘No other New Testament book proclaims the sovereignty and rule of God in so eloquent, if so bewildering, a way. Yet divine power is conditioned by love: the lion is also the lamb (5:5 f.)’ (Ralph P. Martin, New Testament Foundations, ii, Paternoster, 1978, p. 379).

Cf. Merrill C. Tenney, ‘The preterist has an interpretation which has a firm pedestal, but which has no finished sculpture to place on it’ (p. 144).

E.g. W. G. Kümmel, ‘The Apocalypse is a book of its time, written out of its time and for its time, not for the distant generations of the future or even of the end-time. It is an occasional writing (Gelegenheitsschrift), as much so as are the epistles of the NT, and which, therefore, as a matter of principle should be understood in relation to the history of its time’ (Introduction to the New Testament, SCM, 1966, p. 324).

Beatrice S. Neall assumes the historicist position ‘because it sees in Revelation an outline of the course of history from John’s day to the eschaton’. But the book concerns ‘various historical movements and events in the Western world and the Christian church’ (The Concept of Character in the Apocalypse with Implications for Character Education (Univ. of America, 1983, pp. 10,15).

Samuel A. Cartledge points out that each adherent of this school of interpretation works things out so that the end falls in his own time. He further says, ‘No one who studies the widely divergent conclusions reached by this school through the centuries is likely to become a member of this school and believe in the particular scheme which makes his own days necessarily the last days’ (A Conservative Introduction to the New Testament, Zondervan, 1957, p. 206). Jeske cites contemporary equations of the symbols of Revelation with happenings in our own day (pp. 3 f.).

Cf. W. Milligan, ‘While the Apocalypse thus embraces the whole period of the Christian Dispensation, it sets before us within this period the action of great principles and not special incidents’; ‘we are not to look in the Apocalypse for special events, but for an exhibition of the principles which govern the history both of the world and the Church’ (The Revelation of St. John, Macmillan, 1886, pp. 153, 154 f.).

G. T. Manley notes a variety of systems of understanding this book, but concludes by urging the reader to maintain ’an open mind to deal with each portion of the book as seen in relation to its context and to other parts of Scripture’ (The Revelation of St. John, IVF, n.d., p. 11). This is still good advice. Each passage must be interpreted in its own context, and not forced into an overall scheme.

Cf. W. C. van Unnik ’This is not a book written to titillate or to gratify the curiosity of men anxious to tear aside the veil from the future. It is no book of riddles, although often in the past it has been treated as one. It does indeed draw veils aside and open up a vista of God’s actions and his ways; for it proclaims the kingdom of God, which is here and now and yet is still to come in its fulness, bringing with it the overthrow of all that is against him’ (The New Testament, Collins, 1964, p. 161).

Cf. F. B. Clogg, ’The author did not look beyond his own age, but inasmuch as his visions are an expression of the truth that all human history is in God’s hands, they have in a sense been fulfilled many times over’ (An Introduction to the New Testament, Hodder, 1940, P. 293)-

A. M. Hunter sees set forth in the book the great principle ’that all history is divinely controlled; that this world is the scene of a great conflict between good and evil; that the clue to God’s character and action in history is to be found in Christ “the lamb slain from the foundation of the world”; that in the end of the day God must finally cope with evil and make an end of it; and that Heaven is the most real place of all’ (Interpreting the New Testament 1900-1950, SCM, 1951, p. 103).

Cf. M. E. Boismard, ‘When the Seer describes a vision, he translates into symbols the ideas suggested by God; he goes on then, by accumulating colors, symbolic numbers etc., without giving a thought to the resulting plastic effect. His purpose is, above all, to translate the ideas received from God, not to describe a coherent vision, an imaginable vision. To follow him to the end on the way he has chosen, one must play his game and convert into ideas the symbols he describes without troubling oneself about their incoherence’ (Introduction to the New Testament, ed. A. Robert and A. Feuillet, Desclée, 1965, p. 697).

Caird, p. 61.

Cf. M. Dibelius, ‘A certain unique quality belongs to it, for there is here a union of apocalyptic knowledge and of the kind of prophecy which presses to an immediate effect ... nowhere else is the union so organically carried out as in this book’ (A Fresh Approach to the New Testament and Early Christian Literature, Ivor Nicholson and Watson, 1936, p. 124).

A. Wikenhauser maintains that this book ‘is not a product of the study or of intensive meditation on the signs of the times’. He thinks that it ‘was born from the ecstatic experiences of a prophet’. He says further, ‘The author is a genuine prophet.... The prophetic consciousness of the author is attested by the whole book’ (New Testament Introduction, Herder, 1958, p. 545).

Cf. Wikenhauser, ‘Perhaps the strongest proof of the genuinely prophetic character of the book is the fact that the author writes under his own name to definite Christian Churches of his own time and castigates them unsparingly. There is nothing similar in the apocryphal apocalyptical writings of Judaism’ (loc.cit.).

Walter A. Elwell (ed.), Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Baker, 1984), p. 65.

Kiddle, p. xxxiii.

E. Stauffer thinks that the relationship between the apocalyptist on the one hand and the church of Ephesus and the churches attached to it in Asia Minor on the other is very much like that of the Evangelist to his disciples and his churches. He cites Rev.1:4; 2:1,5 and In.21:22, 24 as evidence (New Testament Theology, SCM, 1955, p. 264, n.75).

Justin says, with reference to Rev.20, ‘There was a certain man with us, whose name was John, one of the apostles of Christ, who prophesied, by a revelation ...’ (Dial. Try.lxxxi, ANF, I, p. 240). Charles, who thinks Justin was in error, yet recognizes that this is early testimony and dates it ‘as early as 135 A.D. or thereabouts’ (I, p. xxxvii, n.2).

Kiddle, p. xxxv.

S. Giversen, Apocryphon Johannis (Copenhagen, 1963), p. 49 (Plate 48,16-17). See the note by Andrew Helmbold, NTS, 8,1961-62, pp. 77-79.

In Adv.Haer.iv.20.11 ; iv.30.4; v.26.1 (ANF,I,pp. 491,504,554) he says the apocalypse was written by ‘John, the disciple of the Lord’, by which most agree that he means the apostle.

See J. Stevenson, A New Eusebius (SPCK, 1963), p. 146.

He speaks of ‘the apostle John’ as having been on the isle of Patmos until ’the tyrant’s death’ (Who is the Rich Man ... ?, xlii, ANF, II, p. 603), an apparent reference to Rev. 1:9.

Adv.Marc.iii.14 (ANF ,III,p. 333).

Epiphanius says that the anti-Montanist Alogoi ascribed it to Cerinthus (Haer.li.3; Panarion ,51). According to Kümmel the Roman anti-Montanist, Gaius (c.210), shared this opinion (Introduction, p. 330).

See H.E.iii.25. He divides the sacred writings into the recognized books (those accepted by all), the disputed books, and the spurious. He puts Revelation into the first class if the apostle wrote it, otherwise into the third. This seems to show that for Eusebius, as for others, it was dislike of its teachings that weighed. If it was simply a dispute over the authorship he would surely have put it in the class of disputed works.

L. Pullan points out that the Montanist sect ‘taught an extravagant doctrine about the millenium when Christ would return to reign on earth. This doctrine was partly founded on Rev.xx, and was supported by pretended prophecies. It caused orthodox Christians to be more suspicious about the statements of Christian prophets , and probably made them less anxious to translate and circulate the Revelation’ (The Books of the New Testament, Rivingtons, 1926, p. 271).

Donald Guthrie notes a number of ancient authors who testify to apostolic authorship. He proceeds, ‘So strong is this evidence that it is difficult to believe that they all made a mistake in confusing the John of the Apocalypse with John the apostle.... It must be conceded that taken as a whole (the evidence) points very strongly to the probability that the John of the Apocalypse was, in fact, John the apostle’ (New Testament Introduction, 3rd ed., IVP, 1970, p. 935).

B. W. Bacon, The Making of the New Testament (Williams and Norgate, n.d.), pp. 190 f. He later says, ’One would think the case for apostolic authenticity could hardly be stronger’ (p. 191). We should add that despite this Bacon goes on to the view that the work was not written by the apostle. In view of this his recognition of the force of the external evidence is noteworthy.

Charles, I, p. xliv.

Eusebius, H.E. vii.25, Loeb edn., II, pp. 207 f. James Orr sums up the objection in these words: ’Two works so diverse in character - the Gospel calm, spiritual, mystical, abounding in characteristic expressions as “life,” “light,” “love,” etc., written in idiomatic Gr; the Apocalypse abrupt, mysterious, material in its imagery, inexact and barbarous in its idioms, sometimes employing solecisms - could not, it was argued, proceed from the same author’ (ISBE, IV, p. 2583).

In C. Gore et al. (eds.), A New Commentary on Holy Scripture (SPCK, 1937), p. 681.

Charles, I, pp. xxix ff. R. H. Preston and A. T. Hanson point out that of ‘the 900 or so words in both books they have fewer than half in common’ (p. 24).

Charles, I, pp. xxxii f. ⁵Eusebius, H.E. vii.25, Loeb edn., II, p. 199.

R. A. Edwards, The Gospel according to St. John (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1954), pp. 26f.

Cf. Sweet, ‘his command of tenses is better than that of other NT writers’ (p. 16).

C. F. D. Moule says that this book ‘stands alone as the only New Testament writing containing considerable sections of quite barbarously ungrammatical writing, which, nevertheless, achieve a profoundly moving effect’ (The Birth of the New Testament, Black, 1962, p. 162). It may well have been written of set purpose in such a way as to produce this effect.

Caird, p. 5.

Faner, p. 50.

‘The “rapt seer” will not speak and write like the self-collected, calmly brooding evangelist’ (J. Orr, ISBE, IV, p. 2548).

A. S. Peake cites Heinrici for the information that ’the Greek oracles also are partial to barbarisms of style. The irregular, strange, and surprising are more effective’ (The Revelation of John, Holborn, n.d., pp. 59 f.). He also cites A. Hamack, ‘only the mysterious appears divine’ (ibid., p. 60, n.1).

A New Commentary, p.681. See further F. L. Godet, Commentary on the Gospel of John, I (Zondervan, n.d.), pp. 182-190; Alford, pp. 224-228; G. Salmon, A Historical Introduction to the Study of the Books of the New Testament (John Murray, 1892), pp. 211-221.

See the essay by G. R. Beasley-Murray, How Christian is the Book Revelation?’ in my Festschrift, Reconciliation and Hope, ed. Robert Banks (Paternoster and Eerdmans, 1974), pp. 275-284.

R. A. Edwards, The Gospel according to St. John, p. 26.

Cf. Boismard, ‘Generally speaking, it is the eschatological concept which shows deep going differences in both Gospel and Apocalypse’ (Introduction, p. 720).

T. Zahn can say, ‘The present writer knows of no Jew of the Graeco-Roman diaspora with the name of John; whereas e.g., Jude, Joseph, Jonathan, Samuel, Miriam, and Salome occur in Roman inscriptions’ (Introduction to the New Testament, III, T. & T. Clark, 1909, p. 433, n.l). He proceeds to say, ’It was not until long after the time of Revelation that the custom arose among the Christians of calling themselves by the names of apostles.‘

Eusebius, H.E. vii.25, Loebedn., II, p. 203.

E. Stauffer, Theology, pp. 262 f., n.66. He cites V. Schultze, Kleinasien, II, pp. 104 ff., 450. Cf. W. Marxsen, ‘it is by no means certain that there ever was such a person as this other John (Introduction to the New Testament, Fortress, 1974, p. 277).

R. A. Edwards, The Gospel according to St. John, p. 2.

E. Stauffer, Theology, p. 41.

Ibid.

W. G. Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament, p. 331.

Leon Morris, Studies in the Fourth Gospel (Eerdmans, 1969), pp. 280 ff.

An apostle must originally have been responsible for Lk. 22:30. Again, if the Pauline authorship of Ephesians be accepted, Paul can call himself an apostle and go on to speak of the church as built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets (Eph.1:1; 2:20; cf.3:5; 4:11).

Ford argues that Revelation 4-22 was written by John the Baptist and his disciples, with chapters 1 - 3 a later Christian prefix (Ford, pp. 28 ff.). But this view has not commended itself to many.

Thus Irenaeus speaks of ‘the apocalyptic vision’ as ’seen no very long time since, but almost in our day, towards the end of Domitian’s reign’ (Adv.Haer. v.30.3, ANF, I, pp. 559 f.). Later tradition is of this type.

See Suetonius, Domit. 13.

It is perhaps worth noting that emperor-worship was not imposed by the emperors, at least before Domitian. It was the spontaneous response of the people in the provinces to the peace and good government they owed to the Romans. There was thus a popular demand for emperor-worship and the Christians would have found themselves very much out of step.

E.g. Eusebius, H.E. iii.18.4; iii.20.5; Tertullian, Apol. v. ANF, III, p. 22.

This view is reflected in Syb. Or. v.93 ff., 137 ff., where it was said that Nero would reappear in Persia. A number of pretenders actually appeared.

Tacitus, Ann. xiv.27.

Polycarp writes to the Philippians, ‘For concerning you he (Paul) boasts in all the Churches who then alone had known the Lord, for we had not yet known him’ (xi.3, Loeb trans.). As Polycarp was bishop of Smyrna his ’we’ presumably means the church at Smyrna, and these words then indicate that that church was not in existence at the time in question.

Adv.Haer. v-30.3. He mentions Euanthas, Lateinos and Teitan and favours the last.

T. Zahn, Introduction to the New Testament, III, p. 447, n.4.

Hort, p. xxvi.

R. M. Grant examines the evidence and concludes, ‘All that we can say is that a situation between 68 and 70 is not excluded’ (A Historical Introduction to the New Testament, Collins, 1963, p. 237).

C. F. Burney thought that ‘if the Gospel was written in Aramaic prior to the author’s arrival in Ephesus somewhat late in his life, and he then adopted Greek owing to the exigencies of his new surroundings, such Greek as we find in the Apocalypse would not be surprising’ (The Aramaic Origin of the Fourth Gospel, Oxford 1922, p. 149). The possibility cannot be ruled out, but few have been persuaded that the Fourth Gospel was, in fact, written in Aramaic.

Zahn, however, maintains that the application to Jerusalem of the name Sodom in the same chapter (11:8) presupposes that the city had already been destroyed (Introduction to the New Testament, p. 438).

A. S. Peake cites Mommsen, J. V. Bartlet and C. A. Scott (Revelation, pp. 96 f.). In addition to the argument from 17:10 he thinks that ‘the anticipation that Nero would return with the Parthians suits this period of Vespasian’s reign (i.e. the latter part of the reign) far better than its beginning’. Against it he urges that ‘it does not account so well as a later date for the reference to the eighth emperor, nor for the prominence given to the worship of the emperor, nor for the belief that Nero would return from the abyss, while it has no support whatever in tradition’.

This was noticed long ago by Victorinus of Pettau (who died under Diocletian, 284-305). Boismard cites him as saying that this book ’does not set forth a continuous series of future events, but repeats the same sequence of events under various forms’ (Introduction to the New Testament, p. 702).

Cf. J. Moffatt, ‘The criterion of Jewish or Christian is hazardous in a book which deals with eschatology, where no primitive Christian could work without drawing upon Jewish traditions, in themselves neither stereotyped nor homogeneous. Though a given passage may not be couched in Christian language, it does not necessarily come from a Jewish pen’ (An Introduction to the Literature of the New Testament, T. & T. Clark, 1927, p. 492).

K. and S. Lake point out that ‘by leaving out all the passages which have obviously Christian content, it is possible to arrive at an original Jewish source. But the question remains whether it is legitimate to excise those passages which are contrary to the hypothesis. Our own opinion is that it is not, and that the book was Christian from the beginning, though it is undoubtedly based on Jewish models’ (An Introduction to the New Testament, Christophers, 1938, p. 178).

Synonyms of the New Testament (Macmillan, 1880), p. 129.

But parchment itself ’is attested from c. 1288 BC in Egypt’ (NBD, p. 1343).

Sir W. M. Ramsay, The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia (Hodder, 1904), pp. 324 f.

M. J. S. Rudwick and E. M. B. Green, ET, lxix, 1957-58, p. 178. The whole article, ‘The Laodicean Lukewarmness’, is a valuable study.

Ann.xiv.27 (cited from The Modern Library edn. 1942), p. 335.

Cf N. B. Stonehouse Paul before the Areopagus (Eerdmans, 1957), Chapter IV; Beasley-Murray, ‘an exalted angelic order’.

For the way scrolls were constructed see Sir Frederic Kenyon, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1939), pp. 10 f.

J. B. Lightfoot, St. Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (Macmillan, 1876), p. 225.

So Gerhard Delling, Worship in the New Testament (Darton, Longman and Todd, 1962), pp. 68 f.

Atkinson, however, sets before us an interesting point of view when he says, ’Angels cannot sing the new song, because they have never fallen or needed to be born again. As a matter of fact there is nothing in the Bible to tell us that angels can sing at all.’

Cf. Jdg. 18:30; 1 Ki. 12:29. Rabbinic writers stressed this. Thus R. Johanan said that Abraham prophetically ’saw his descendants who would practise idolatry in Dan’ (Sanh. 96a).

This view is put forward by Irenaeus (Adv.Haer.v.30.2), who bases it on the words ‘The snorting of the enemy’s horses is heard from Dan’ (Je. 8:16). Swete cites Hippolytus: ’As the Christ was born of the tribe of Judah so the Antichrist will be born of the tribe of Dan’ (De Ant.14). Satan is said to be this tribe’s prince (Test. Dan v.6). Dan’s bad reputation may be quite old, for this tribe (along with Zebulun) is omitted from the genealogies in the early chapters of 1 Chronicles.

The Expositor, VI, v, 1902, pp. 225-240.

There is a valuable discussion of the types of locust known in Palestine in an Excursus appended to S. R. Driver’s commentary on Joel in the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges.

See also J. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (Macmillan, 1902), p. 211.

There were not enough letters for the system to work, and a few other signs were pressed into service. There is a list in W. Gunion Rutherford, First Greek Grammar (Macmillan, 1891), pp. 143-145. For a similar system in Hebrew see Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar ed. E. Kautzsch, rev. A. E. Cowley (Oxford, 1910), p. 30.

TDNT, V, p. 422. See further my The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross³, pp. 180 ff.

For a discussion of this word see my The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross³, pp. 287 ff.

On the death of Nero, Galba assumed power, i.e. in June AD 68. But he was murdered on 15 January 69. Otho, who followed, was never unopposed and he committed suicide on 17 April. Vitellius followed, but Vespasian declared war on him on 1 July and he was killed on or about 20 December. Thus none of the three was ever able really to establish himself. But each bore the title ’emperor’

W. E. Shewell-Cooper, Plants and Fruits of the Bible (Darton, Longman and Todd, 1962), pp. 121 f.

See further the note on Jn.1:1 and Additional Note A in my The Gospel according to John (Eerdmans, 1971).

For an excellent account of the divergent views, see Walvoord, pp. 282—290. Walvoord himself favours the pre-millenial view.

For the relation of this doctrine to salvation by grace, see my The Biblical Doctrine of Judgment (Tyndale Press, 1960), pp. 66 f. Cf. Mounce, ’the issue is not salvation by works but works as the irrefutable evidence of a man’s actual relationship with God.’

For these precious stones see the articles by J. L. Myres, EB, pp. 4799-4812; I. H. Marshall, IBD, ii, pp. 781-788; Eleanor F. Jourdain, ET, xxii, 1910-11, pp. 448-450; N. Hillyer, NIDNTT, iii, pp. 395-398.

100

See his article, ‘The Order of Jewels in Revelation xxi. 19—20: A Theory Eliminated’ (JTS, n.s., xxvi, 1975, pp. 95—100).

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